They say that Ward's no heart, but I deny it;
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it--
was provoked by a remark made at table by Mr. Ward. On Rogers observing
that his carriage had broken down, and that he had been obliged to come
in a hackney-coach, Mr. Ward grumbled out in a very audible whisper, "In
a hearse, I should think," alluding to the poet's corpse-like
appearance. This remark Rogers never forgave, and, I have no doubt,
pored over his retaliatory impromptu, for he had no facility in
composition. Sydney Smith used to say that, if Rogers was writing a
dozen verses, the street was strewn with straw, the knocker tied up,
and the answer to the tender inquiries of his anxious friends was, that
Mr. Rogers was as well as could be expected.
It used to be very amusing in London to see Rogers with his _fidus
Achates_, Luttrell. They were inseparable, though rival wits, and
constantly saying bitter things to each other. Luttrell was the natural
son of Lord Carhampton, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and in his youth
known as the famous Colonel Luttrell of Junius. I consider him to have
been the most agreeable man I ever met. He was far more brilliant in
conversation than Rogers; and his animated, bustling manner formed an
agreeable contrast with the spiteful calmness of his corpse-like
companion. He was extremely irritable, and even passionate; and in his
moments of anger he would splutter and stutter like a maniac in his
anxiety to give utterance to the flow of thoughts which crowded his
mind, and, I might almost say, his mouth.
On one occasion the late Lady Holland took him a drive in her carriage
over a rough road, and, as she was very nervous, she insisted on being
driven at a foot's pace. This ordeal lasted some hours, and when he was
at last released, poor Luttrell, perfectly exasperated, rushed into the
nearest club-house, and exclaimed, clenching his teeth and hands, "The
very funerals passed us!"
THE PIG-FACED LADY
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
Among the many absurd reports and ridiculous stories current in former
days, I know of none more absurd or more ridiculous than the general
belief of everybody in London, during the winter of 1814, in the
existence of a lady with a pig's face. This interesting specimen of
porcine physiognomy was said to be the daughter of a great lady residing
in Grosvenor Square.
It was rumoured that during the illuminations which took place to
celebrate the peace, when a great crowd had assembled in Piccadilly and
St. James's Street, and when carriages could not move on very rapidly,
_horresco referens!_ an enormous pig's snout had been seen protruding
from a fashionable-looking bonnet in one of the landaus which were
passing. The mob cried out, "The pig-faced lady! Stop the carriage--stop
the carriage!" The coachman, wishing to save his bacon, whipped his
horses, and drove through the crowd at a tremendous pace; but it was
said that the coach had been seen to set down its monstrous load in
Grosvenor Square.
Another report was also current. Sir William Elliot, a youthful baronet,
calling one day to pay his respects to the great lady in Grosvenor
Square, was ushered into a drawing-room, where he found a person
fashionably dressed, who, on turning towards him, displayed a hideous
pig's face. Sir William, a timid young gentleman, could not refrain from
uttering a shout of horror, and rushed to the door in a manner the
reverse of polite; when the infuriated lady or animal, uttering a series
of grunts, rushed at the unfortunate baronet as he was retreating, and
inflicted a severe wound on the back of his neck. This highly improbable
story concluded by stating that Sir William's wound was a severe one,
and had been dressed by Hawkins, the surgeon, in St. Audley Street.
I am really almost ashamed to repeat this absurd story; but many persons
now alive can remember the strong belief in the existence of the
pig-faced lady which prevailed in the public mind at the time of which I
speak. The shops were full of caricatures of the pig-faced lady, in a
poke bonnet and large veil, with "A pig in a poke" written underneath
the print. Another sketch represented Sir William Elliot's misadventure,
and was entitled, "Beware the pig-sty!"
HOBY, THE BOOTMAKER, OF ST. JAMES'S STREET
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
Hoby was not only the greatest and most fashionable bootmaker in London,
but, in spite of the old adage, _ne sutor ultra crepidam_, he employed
his spare time with considerable success as a Methodist preacher at
Islington. He was said to have in his employment three hundred workmen;
and he was so great a man in his own estimation that he was apt to take
rather an insolent tone with his customers. He was, however, tolerated
as a sort of privileged person, and his impertinence was not only
overlooked but was considered as rather a good joke. He was a pompous
fellow, with a considerable vein of sarcastic humour.
I remember Horace Churchill (afterwards killed in India with the rank of
major-general), who was then an ensign in the Guards, entering Hoby's
shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill made that he
should never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby, putting on a pathetic
cast of countenance, called to his shopman:
"John, close the shutters. It is all over with us. I must shut up shop;
Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me."
Churchill's fury can be better imagined than described.
On another occasion the late Sir John Shelley came into Hoby's shop to
complain that his top-boots had split in several places. Hoby quietly
said:
"How did that happen, Sir John?"
"Why, in walking to my stables."
"Walking to your stables!" said Hoby, with a sneer. "I made the boots
for riding, not walking."
Hoby was bootmaker to the Duke of Kent; and, as he was calling on H.R.H.
to try on some boots, the news arrived that Lord Wellington had gained a
great victory over the French army at Vittoria. The duke was kind enough
to mention the glorious news to Hoby, who coolly said:
"If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself he never
would have had his great and constant successes; for my boots and
prayers bring his lordship out of all his difficulties."
One may well say that there is nothing like leather; for Hoby died worth
a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
Hoby was bootmaker to George III., the Prince of Wales, the royal dukes,
and many officers in the Army and Navy. His shop was situated at the top
of St. James's Street, at the corner of Piccadilly, next to the Old
Guards Club. He was bootmaker to the Duke of Wellington from his
boyhood, and received innumerable orders in the duke's handwriting, both
from the Peninsula and France, which he always religiously preserved.
Hoby was the first man who drove about London in a tilbury. It was
painted black, and drawn by a beautiful black cob. This vehicle was
built by the inventor, Mr. Tilbury, whose manufactory was, fifty years
back, in a street leading from South Audley Street into Park Street.
HARRINGTON HOUSE AND LORD PETERSHAM
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
When our army returned to England in 1814 my young friend, Augustus
Stanhope, took me one afternoon to Harrington House, in Stable-yard,
St. James's, where I was introduced to Lord and Lady Harrington, and all
the Stanhopes. On entering a long gallery, I found the whole family
engaged in their sempiternal occupation of tea-drinking. Neither in
Nankin, Pekin, nor Canton was the teapot more assiduously and constantly
replenished than at this hospitable mansion. I was made free of the
corporation, if I may use the phrase, by a cup being handed to me; and I
must say that I never tasted any tea so good before or since.
As an example of the undeviating tea-table habits of the house of
Harrington, General Lincoln Stanhope once told me that, after an absence
of several years in India, he made his reappearance at Harrington House,
and found the family, as he had left them on his departure, drinking tea
in the long gallery. On his presenting himself, his father's only
observation and speech of welcome to him was, "Hallo, Linky, my dear
boy! delighted to see you. Have a cup of tea?"
LORD ALVANLEY
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
From the time of good Queen Bess, when the English language first began
to assume somewhat of its present form, idiom, and mode of expression,
to the day of our most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria, every age has
had its punsters, humorists, and eloquent conversationalists; but I much
doubt whether the year 1789 did not produce the greatest wit of modern
times, in the person of William Lord Alvanley.
After receiving a very excellent and careful education, Alvanley entered
the Coldstream Guards at an early age, and served with distinction at
Copenhagen and in the Peninsula; but, being in possession of a large
fortune, he left the Army, gave himself up entirely to the pursuit of
pleasure, and became one of the principal dandies of the day. With the
brilliant talents which he possessed, he might have attained to the
highest eminence in any line of life he had embraced.
Not only was Alvanley considered the wittiest man of his day in England,
but, during his residence in France, and tours through Russia and other
countries, he was universally admitted to possess, not only great wit
and humour, but _l'esprit français_ in its highest perfection; and no
greater compliment could be paid him by foreigners than this. He was one
of the rare examples (particularly rare in the days of the dandies, who
were generally sour and spiteful) of a man combining brilliant wit and
repartee with the most perfect good-nature. His manner, above all, was
irresistible; and the slight lisp, which might have been considered as a
blemish, only added piquancy and zest to his sayings.
In appearance he was about the middle height, and well and strongly
built, though he latterly became somewhat corpulent. He excelled in all
manly exercises, was a hard rider to hounds, and was what those who do
not belong to the upper ten thousand call "a good-plucked one." His face
had somewhat of the rotund form and smiling expression which
characterises the jolly friars one meets with in Italy. His hair and
eyes were dark, and he had a very small nose, to which, after deep
potations, his copious pinches of snuff had some difficulty in finding
their way, and were in consequence rather lavishly bestowed upon his
florid cheek. He resided in Park Street, St. James's, and his dinners
there and at Melton were considered to be the best in England. He never
invited more than eight people, and insisted upon having the somewhat
expensive luxury of an apricot-tart on the sideboard the whole year
round.
Alvanley was a good speaker; and, having made some allusion to O'Connell
in rather strong terms in the House of Lords, the latter very coarsely
and unjustly denounced him, in a speech he made in the House of Commons,
as a bloated buffoon. Alvanley thereupon called out the Liberator, who
would not meet him, but excused himself by saying, "There is blood
already on this hand"--alluding to his fatal duel with D'Esterre.
Alvanley then threatened O'Connell with personal chastisement. Upon
this, Morgan O'Connell, a very agreeable, gentlemanlike man, who had
been in the Austrian service, and whom I knew well, said he would take
his father's place. A meeting was accordingly agreed upon at Wimbledon
Common, Alvanley's second was Colonel George Dawson Damer, and our late
consul at Hamburgh, Colonel Hodges, acted for Morgan O'Connell. Several
shots were fired without effect, and the seconds then interfered and put
a stop to any further hostilities.
On their way home in a hackney-coach, Alvanley said, "What a clumsy
fellow O'Connell must be, to miss such a fat fellow as I am! He ought to
practise at a haystack to get his hand in." When the carriage drove up
to Alvanley's door, he gave the coachman a sovereign. Jarvey was profuse
in his thanks and said, "It's a great deal for only having taken your
lordship to Wimbledon."
"No, my good man," said Alvanley; "I give it you, not for taking me, but
for bringing me back."
Everybody knows the story of Gunter, the pastrycook. He was mounted on a
runaway horse with the King's hounds, and excused himself for riding
against Alvanley by saying, "Oh my lord, I can't hold him, he's so hot!"
"Ice him, Gunter--ice him!" was the consoling rejoinder.
In the hunting-field in a northern county, Sir Charles S----, whose
married life was not a very happy one, wore one morning at the meet a
wonderful greatcoat, with enormous horn buttons. Alvanley, riding up to
him, and apparently looking at the buttons with great admiration, said,
"A little attention of Lady S----'s, I presume, Sir Charles?"
Alvanley had a delightful recklessness and _laisser aller_ in
everything. His manner of putting out his light at night was not a very
pleasant one for his host for the time being. He always read in bed, and
when he wanted to go to sleep he either extinguished his candle by
throwing it on the floor in the middle of the room, and taking a shot at
it with the pillow, or else quietly placed it, when still lighted, under
the bolster. At Badminton, and other country houses, his habits in this
respect were so well known that a servant was ordered to sit up in the
passage to keep watch over him.
Alvanley's recklessness in money matters was almost incredible. His
creditors having become at last very clamorous, that able and astute man
of the world, Mr. Charles Greville, with the energetic and bustling
kindness in mixing himself up in all his friends' affairs which still
distinguishes him, had undertaken to settle those of Alvanley. After
going through every item of the debts, matters looked more promising
than Mr. Greville expected, and he took his leave. In the morning he
received a note from Alvanley, to say that he had quite forgotten to
take into account a debt of fifty-five thousand pounds.
SALLY LUNN
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
Some fifty years back, or thereabouts, Albinia, Countess of
Buckinghamshire, lived in her charming villa in Pimlico, surrounded by a
large and beautiful garden. It was here she used to entertain the
_élite_ of London society with magnificent _fêtes, bal champêtres_, and
public breakfasts. After one of those _fêtes_, I called one morning to
pay my respects; and, on ringing the bell, the servant ushered me into
the conservatory, where I found Lady Harrington, the celebrated
cantatrice Mrs. Billington, and the Duke of Sussex, who was said to be
very much _épris_ with the English "Catalani," as she was called.
Mrs. Billington was extremely beautiful, though it was absurd to compare
her to Catalani as a singer; but she was the favourite of the Duke of
Sussex, which made her many friends. During my visit, chocolate and
tea-cakes were served to our party, when Lady Harrington related a
curious anecdote about those cakes. She said her friend Madame de
Narbonne, during the emigration, determined not to live upon the bounty
of foreigners, found means to amass money enough to enable her to open a
shop in Chelsea, not far from the then fashionable balls of Ranelagh.
It had been the custom in France, before the Revolution, for young
ladies in some noble families to learn the art of making preserves and
pastry; accordingly, Madame de Narbonne commenced her operations under
the auspices of some of her acquaintances; and all those who went to
Ranelagh made a point of stopping and buying some of her cakes. Their
fame spread like lightning throughout the West End, and orders were
given to have them sent for breakfast and tea in many great houses in
the neighbourhood of St. James's. Madame de Narbonne employed a Scotch
maid-servant to execute her orders. The name of this woman was "Sally
Lunn," and ever since a particular kind of tea-cake has gone by that
name.
Madame de Narbonne, not speaking English, replied to her customers (when
they inquired the name of the _brioches_), "bon." Hence the etymology of
"bun," according to Lady Harrington; but I confess that I do not feel
quite satisfied with her derivation.
"MONK" LEWIS
[Sidenote: _Captain Gronow_]
"Monk" Lewis had a black servant, affectionately attached to his master;
but so ridiculously did this servant repeat his master's expressions,
that he became the laughing-stock of all his master's friends. Brummell
used often to raise a hearty laugh at Carlton House by repeating
witticisms which he pretended to have heard from Lewis's servant; some
of these were very stale; yet they were considered so good as to be
repeated at the clubs, and greatly added to the reputation of the Beau
as a teller of good things. "On one occasion," said Brummell, "I called
to inquire after a young lady who had sprained her ankle. Lewis, on
being asked how she was, had said, in the black's presence, 'The doctor
has seen her, put her legs straight, and the poor chicken is doing
well.' The servant, therefore, told me, with a mysterious and knowing
look, 'Oh, sir, the doctor has been here, she has laid eggs, and she and
the chickens are doing well.'"
THE CARELESSE NURSE MAYD
[Sidenote: _Hood_]
I sawe a Mayd sitte on a Bank,
Beguiled by Wooer fayne and fond;
And whiles His flatterynge Vowes she drank,
Her Nurselynge slipt within a Pond!
All Even Tide they Talkde and Kist,
For She was fayre and He was Kinde;
The Sunne went down before She wist
Another Sonne had sett behinde!
With angrie Hands and frownynge Browe,
That deemd Her owne the Urchine's Sinne,
She pluckt Him out, but he was nowe
Past being Whipt for fallynge in.
She then beginnes to wayle the Ladde
With Shrikes that Echo answered round--
O! foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde
The Momente that her Care was drownd!
SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS
[Sidenote: _Charles Dickens_]
One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond
course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy
of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr.
Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United
States of America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting
trim and fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative
nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald
sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the
heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the
administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent
eloquence of a village church. The humble homes of England, with their
domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and
win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper
air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the
whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist
are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.
But it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my
present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such
neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.
Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more than the bad
company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but
British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole
street of them in St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and
immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the
pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man
who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye.
Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted
velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur
caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of
society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a
goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered,
in writing, to barter himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or
even kitchen stuff. Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any
finch! I bought that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung
upon a nail over against my table. He lived outside a counterfeit
dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it
would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the
garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he
left off being thirsty--which was not in the bond--or he could not make
up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he
let it go; a shock which in the best of times had made him tremble. He
drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After an
interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, the merchant who
had educated him was appealed to. The merchant was a bow-legged
character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry.
He wore a fur cap and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny.
He sent word that he would "look round." He looked round, appeared in
the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the
goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was
appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of water; and
finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill as if he had been
to the nearest wine-vaults and got drunk.
Donkeys, again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the donkey goes in at
the street-door, and appears to live upstairs, for I have examined the
back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out.
Gentility, nobility, royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do
what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest
price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his
back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest
slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then starve
him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him
bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular
private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of nature;
but in the shy neighbourhood state you shall see them always in the same
hands and always developing their very best energies for the very worst
company. I have known a donkey--by sight; we were not on speaking
terms--who lived over on the Surrey side of London Bridge, among the
fastnesses of Jacob's Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that
animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to go out
alone idling. I have met him a mile from his place of residence,
loitering about the streets; and the expression of his countenance at
such times was most degraded. He was attached to the establishment of an
elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday
nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking
up his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving
satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His mistress
was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw him
(about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by
this failing. Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and
forgotten, he went off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for
some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart
into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and
became greatly involved. He was taken into custody by the police, and,
the Green Yard of the district being near at hand, was backed into that
place of durance. At that crisis I encountered him; the stubborn sense
he evinced of being--not to compromise the expression--a blackguard, I
never saw exceeded in the human subject. A flaring candle in a paper
shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged
harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth
and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have
seen boys being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own
brother.
The dogs of shy neighbourhoods I observe to avoid play, and to be
conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that
is in the nature of all animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a
back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth who has greatly
distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait
with him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the
playbill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in
the act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to
have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design
is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such
incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I
would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in
association with dramatic fiction I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too
honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire
last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended
the performance. His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it
occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it
scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his
powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window,
after a comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fable was a
little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while
his master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous
night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and
laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the
faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and clearly
choking himself against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of
all that his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and
trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the
murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his
victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into
the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest
temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to
the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down, panting, and
amiably surveying the audience, with his tail beating the boards, like a
Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was
audibly calling to him "Co-o-ome here!" while the victim, struggling
with his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expressions. It
happened, through these means, that when he was in course of time
persuaded to trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it
(for dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that
awful retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.
In a shy street behind Long Acre, two honest dogs live who perform in
Punch's shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with
both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to
look down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. The
difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their minds about these dogs
appears to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them
over and over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind
the legs of the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect
their frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those
articles of personal adornment an eruption--a something in the nature of
mange, perhaps. From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a
country dog only the other day, who had come up to Covent Garden Market
under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed
along with him. He loitered about the corners of the four streets
commanded by my window; and bad London dogs came up and told him lies
that he didn't believe; and worse London dogs came up and made proposals
to him to go end steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and
the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a
doorway. He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with
Toby. He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the
frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled. The show was
pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience formed, the drum
and pipes struck up. My country dog remained immovable, intently staring
at these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by appearing
on his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into
Toby's mouth. At this spectacle the country dog threw up his head, gave
one terrible howl, and fled due west.
We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively
of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith
who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to the
public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against
posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps
him under rigid coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a
gentleman--a gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog
kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman
never talked about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a
shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.
There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods who keep boys. I have
my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys. He feigns that
he can bring down sparrows and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he
takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban
fields. He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some
mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves
incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and
wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously.
There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind
man. He may be seen most days, in Oxford Street, haling the blind man
away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the
man; wholly of the dog's conception and execution. Contrariwise, when
the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare
and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy
collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his
will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog
at Harrow--he was so intent on that direction. The north wall of
Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a
shy spot for appointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock
in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone
there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed, at the same
time, openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling
where they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move
again. At a small butcher's in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason
for suppressing the name; it is by Notting Hill, and gives upon the
district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black-and-white dog who
keeps a drover. He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently
allows this drover to get drunk. On these occasions it is the dog's
custom to sit outside the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep,
plainly casting up in his mind how many he began with when he left the
market, and at what places he has left the rest. I have seen him
perplexed by not being able to account to himself for certain particular
sheep. A light has gradually broken on him, he has remembered at what
butcher's he left them, and in a burst of grave satisfaction has caught
a fly off his nose, and shown himself much relieved. If I could at any
time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the drover, and not
the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly proved by his way
of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the drover came out
besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions, which
he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep entirely into his own
hands, has merely remarked with respectful firmness, "That instruction
would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention
to yourself--you will want it all"; and has driven his charge away, with
an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has
left his lout of a man very, very far behind.
As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking
consciousness of being in poor circumstances--for the most part
manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a
misgiving that somebody is going to harness them to something, to pick
up a living--so the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency
to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by
ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely
crowded state of all the avenues to cats'-meat; not only is there a
moral and politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable to these
reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is
not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old
mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest
cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recognition with
several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George's
Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and also in the
back settlements of Drury Lane. In appearance, they are very like the
women among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome
beds into the street, without any preparation. They leave their young
families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily
quarrel and swear and scratch and spit at street corners. In particular,
I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event
of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed in a
certain dusty dowdiness down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up
of things. I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline
matron of this class washing her face when in an interesting condition.
Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
animals of shy neighbourhoods by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
moodiness of the tom-cats and their resemblance in many respects to a
man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of
the same localities.
That anything born of an egg and invested with wings should have got to
the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls
_that_ going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing
more in this connexion to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the
completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the
birds of the air--have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and
mud--have forgotten all about live trees and make roosting-places of
shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I
wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are. I accept
as products of nature and things of course a reduced Bantam family of my
acquaintance in the Hackney Road, who are incessantly at the
pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a
melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable of they
derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's side-entry. Here, they
are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come
down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. I know a low
fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole
establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug
department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them
among the company's legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and
so passes his life. Over Waterloo Bridge there is a shabby old speckled
couple (they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washingstand, and
towel-horse-making trade) who are always trying to get in at the door of
a chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs.
Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular
denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the
building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine;
but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door;
while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down,
encouraging her and defying the Universe. But the family I have been
best acquainted with, since the removal from this trying sphere of a
Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal
Green. Their abstraction from the objects among which they live, or
rather their conviction that those objects have all come into existence
in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me that I have made
them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. After careful
observation of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family
consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are
represented by the leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I
judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feathers and
visibility of quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of
office-pens. When a railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes
round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from
under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a passing
property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it.
They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments
of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck at.
Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort of hail;
shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them
as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds
of the two lords, the early public-house at the corner has superseded
the sun.
DRINKING SONG
[Sidenote: _J.K. Stephen_]
There are people, I know, to be found,
Who say and apparently think
That sorrow and care may be drowned
By a timely consumption of drink.
Does not man, these enthusiasts ask,
Most nearly approach the divine
When engaged in the soul-stirring task
Of filling his body with wine?
Have not beggars been frequently known,
When satisfied, soaked and replete,
To imagine their bench was a throne
And the civilised world at their feet?
Lord Byron has finely described
The remarkably soothing effect
Of liquor, profusely imbibed,
On a soul that is shattered and wrecked.
In short, if your body or mind
Or your soul or your purse come to grief,
You need only get drunk, and you'll find,
Complete and immediate relief.
For myself, I have managed to do
Without having recourse to this plan,
So I can't write a poem for you,
And you'd better get some one who can.
LETTERS OF T.E. BROWN
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
Thank you very much for the satire. Satire is an undoubted branch of
poetry; but I do not affect it much. There is a strong, healthy, noble
satire, the _sæva indignatio_of the Latin classics. But, short of that,
satire seems only an element of discontent and unhappiness.
I know the "pip," the "black pigs" too, know them well; but they are
quite beneath contempt; and nothing on earth would induce me to cross
the bright blue of my serenity. I have a great notion of being the
master of my own happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the
manners and conduct of other people.
If a man slights me, he does me no harm; but if his conduct is
detrimental to the general good, if he is unjust, a villain in high
place, a seducer, a poison, a snare to the innocent, then have at him!
though, _constitutionally_ I had rather leave him alone.
The sum of happiness in the world is not too large. I would like, if
possible, to increase it by the modest contribution of my own store. If
so, I must guard it from all disturbance; and poetry enables me to do
this, gives me a thousand springs of joy, in none of which there is one
drop of bitterness--and thank God for that!
We are here in the I. of Wight, busy comparing it with the I. of Man,
of course. It is really a beautiful island, not merely as regards
richness of vegetation, an ornament that just now is not available, but
also for its configuration. The "lay of the land," the attitude, and
gesture of the lines are admirable. The coast is dismally inferior to
ours; glens are not to be seen, and streams are puny, but very clean. On
the whole we give the preference to Mona, and that upon purely æsthetic,
not patriotic, grounds.
I hope you are all well and thriving. Accept my best wishes for the New
Year. Your satire discloses perhaps a slight biliary secretion--all
satire, I fear, is bile. I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities
rather than to any permanent disorder!
P.S.--I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them....
* * * * *
I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank
deep draughts of--don't know how to describe it--that social brewage
which I get nowhere else. Very likely other people get it in their own
habitats. But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was
quivering and trembling all over with _stories_--they are like leaves on
a tree. The people are always telling them to one another, and any
morning or evening you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable
anecdotes, sayings, tragedies, comedies--I wonder whether they lie
fearfully. They are a marvellously _narrational_ community. And you've
not been there a day before all this closes round you with a quiet
familiarity of "use and custom" which is most fascinating. Nothing else
in the universe seems of any consequence.
And warly cares, and warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!
A week more and I should have become reabsorbed into this medium past
recovery and past recognition....
I have been musing a good deal over my "Dooiney-molla"[1]: he is now
taking shape, and looms rather large. I believe you will like him, and
his fiery little groom. These good souls do well to visit my dreams:
they are such a comfort; and, do you know, they positively do "go on" in
my dreams. Here are two lines which came tripping at the window of my
slumbers last night: